By Don Hall

At entry level, you are given a minor character to fight with and that character has a low bar of badassery. You play the game some and build up your character but he will always fall just a bit short, no matter how much you play and how much you build him up, unless you drop a few bucks for some add-on upgrades.

Once you start those upgrades, the temptation to keep spending money to continue the cycle is too much. Too many players out there with bought and paid for weaponry, skins, skills. If you want to compete, you gotta throw down the dimes.

Soon, after spending a lot more money that you thought you would on a fucking game, your character is close to the top of the gaming heap. You no longer play the online matches with the vast array of lesser developed characters—they’re so easy to beat, the act is just sort of boring.

Eventually, you stop playing because there isn’t much challenge left but you still keep buying upgrades offered because, what the fuck else are you supposed to do? I mean, look at all the financial investment and time spent. If you just quit, what was the goddamned point?

The point was to beat other people. To be a winner. To achieve another rung up the Kombat ladder.

With the most recent surge of capitalism hate (and the ill-researched understanding of exactly what socialism is on both sides of the Partisan Divide), it seems that the culture needs to change significantly before the competing isms can provide a temporary dominance of the social over the capital. No more competitive video games. No more professional sports. No more television contests. No more grades in schools. The people on the covers of magazines must be chosen by lottery and anyone can enter. 

The problem with capitalism is not capitalists or even the most ridiculously wealthy in our midst but in our culture of competition. Winners and losers. Awards and penalties. Capitalism is baked into our DNA culturally like sugar is in everything we eat. Separating the sugar from the rest takes time and generally makes it all taste like pissed on cardboard. It requires a lot of sacrificing those extras we dig so much.

I have no clue how we turn back that giant clock so maybe we’re stuck with capitalism. Maybe the best we can do is regulate it.